The 4 Ways of Raising Money for Secondary Schools

There are four ways in which secondary schools can increase the amount of money that they have to spend each year: by gaining additional support from parents, through donations from businesses, through income from sponsorship projects, and through efficiency savings.

Raising Money for Secondary Schools considers each of these approaches in turn and considers not only approaches that work, but also popular fund-raising methodologies that are often witnessed but are rarely successful.

Indeed, one of the big problems that schools can have with fund-raising is that many of the time-honoured methods of raising or saving money no longer work at all effectively.

When a school comes up against this issue and sees that the amount of money being raised or saved is in decline, there is sometimes a tendency simply to say, “fund-raising doesn’t work any more”. However, this explanation is generally not correct. Rather it is the case that the ways in which businesses and individuals respond to appeals for support have changed.

Further it is also true that what appears to be the common sense approach to gaining efficiency savings simply don’t work. Efficiency savings are possible, but for most schools this is only true when the school follows a particular approach.

This volume also asks the reader to focus on the position of the donor, and consider what sort of appeal will work. The reader is also encouraged to approach different types of organisations in different ways, rather than sending out identical emails and letters to all local companies, large and small.

There are also details of how the school should point out the benefits that will accrue to the donor, as well as to the school.

The volume concludes with a review of 22 separate sponsorship plans and a review of how efficiency savings can be made – often with savings that can be in excess of the amount of money that can be brought in through fund-raising.

Raising Money for Secondary School by Tony Attwoodis available as a photocopiable book or on CD Rom which can itself be copied or loaded onto the school’s learning platform or intranet.